Thursday, February 1, 2018

how many people do we need?

If we want to oppose immigration we need to have a coherent well-articulated position on the issue. Simply saying we want immigration stopped isn’t going to work. If you do that you simply get accused of racism, and of wanting to wreck the economy. We need to put a bit more thought into our position.

There is for instance one very important question we need to consider. Exactly how many people do we want in our country?

Australia’s population is close to 25 million. That doesn’t sound much when you look at the size of the country but in fact our population is concentrated to a quite incredible degree in a handful of large cities. Well over a third of the population is concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne. Those cities are increasingly unpleasant places in which to live.

So assuming we want to stabilise our population, at what point do we want to stabilise it?

The same applies to other countries. The UK’s population is now 66.5 million, surely much too high. The US has a population of 325 million.

In all these cases the ideal figure would probably be somewhat lower than the current figure. Arguing for any serious population reduction is not within the realms of the politically possible. But we do need to have some kind of target to aim for. Which means we need to come up with a realistic rate of immigration to achieve that target. A rate that will obviously be very much lower than the current rates.

Of course in reality we probably don’t need any immigration at all. The problem with that is that such a view will get you labelled as not merely an extremist but a hopelessly unrealistic one. I do think though that choosing some kind of target figure would be politically useful. If you’re asked how much immigration you want and you reply that you don’t know then you tend to look like someone who hasn’t thought things through.

In the year ending June 2017 Australia’s net migration intake was a staggering 245,000. The danger for anti-immigration advocates of not having a clear idea of how many immigrants we should be bringing in is that the government could announce that it was “slashing” the yearly immigration intake to 220,000 and we would be expected to hail that as a major concession. On the other hand if we say that we actually need no more than a maximum of 20,000 then it would be easier for us to point out that any minor reduction was merely a sham.

We also need to address other major issues. The demographic collapse of white European populations is real and it’s been happening for a long time. The official figures for fertility rates in western countries understate the scale of the problem because those figures are artificially inflated by the very high fertility of immigrant populations in those countries. The problem is a critical one. We need sensible ideas for addressing this problem. The big worry is that the demographic collapse may already be irreversible. We don’t know, because we’re the first society in history to try to commit suicide by failing to reproduce.

If we can’t articulate a strategy for reversing this demographic suicide then we leave ourselves open to the specious arguments of immigration boosters that western countries cannot survive without mass immigration. We also need to be able to counter the argument that an ageing population will be a disaster.

We also must find a counter to the argument that without immigration GDP would stop growing and the sky would fall.

There’s a fair amount of anti-immigration sentiment out there but it’s hopelessly disorganised and diffuse and incoherent. We need to take a position on the issue that is focused, consistent and well-reasoned.

3 comments:

I have always held the view that we should use it before we are in imminent danger of losing it. We have far too few to even defend ourselves and far too few to develop eminently developable land. Then there is the matginal and poor land, which nations such as Israel simply saw as a challenge.

So, 100 million over the next 20 years. 5 million per year. Selected. Citizenship after five years working in very large scale projects in remote places.

The centre of the Landmass should be flooded to make a huge inland see, with ports and 75 modest cities of 1 million people constructed around it. The Northern part of WA needs developing. It is enormously fertile.

I am more concerned with the quality of immigrants than simple numbers. Who they are; their ability to integrate; their desire to contribute etc are the principle problems with current immigration policies.

So, 100 million over the next 20 years. 5 million per year. Selected. Citizenship after five years working in very large scale projects in remote places.

Since the fertility of our European population is below replacement level that would mean 75 million immigrants. If you want 75 million high quality immigrants that will mean most of them will be Chinese, with the remainder being south Asian.

And you won't get those large scale projects going under our current political/economic system. You'd have to move to the Chinese model of state capitalism. Democracy would obviously have to go. We'd be pretty much a Chinese province. Chinese would be the official language.

That would not necessarily be all bad. We'd probably be very prosperous and stable. I for one would not miss democracy very much. We'd probably be far less degenerate and feminism would be largely a thing of the past. The very small European minority would probably be tolerated although they'd mostly be an economic underclass.

We wouldn't need to send any more young men off to die in neocon wars in the Middle East. We would no longer be an American vassal state. We'd be a Chinese vassal state, which might be an improvement.

Of course much would depend on how the US reacts when China becomes a genuine superpower. I'm inclined to suspect that they'll choose war rather than allow the emergence of a genuine rival so we might get caught up in that. But then the Chinese might well decide to give us the nuclear weapons we'd need to deter a US attack.

Australia as we currently know it would be gone. We might have to give up some of our most precious rights, such as homosexual marriage.

In my opinion : Any current calculations on population carrying capacity are based upon Peak Oil and HiTec Efficient Delivery Systems... Yes? Current UK 66 million, Aus’ Wo million. What would these figures look like after if a small world war interrupted Fuel, Food, Goods & electronic money? Aus' has bigger space so maybe would feel less damage. UK is in a poorer position as it's more densely populated, so I estimate a larger percentage fall in carrying capacity. It's no use mentioning such thinking to mainstream politicians because they don't think like that. I would recommend a Personal Prepping strategy, to have a store of essentials, Water, Food and Fuel , if properly and safely stored. Could the drop in carrying capacities be around 50 and 70 in percents respectively : Is that feasible?